Roland Atkins born July 2, 1933, in Columbus, Mississippi. He graduated from Mississippi State where he played for the freshman football team.

Following graduation he spent two years in the service in Berlin, Germany. In the military he played service football and baseball. He spent several summers in the early 1960 managing the West Point Packers, a semi-pro baseball team in Columbus, MS.

Atkins was an assistant football and head basketball at Alcorn High School in north Mississippi in 1961. The next year he served in the same capacity at Citrus High School in Inverness, FL.

In 1963, he accepted his first job as a head football coach at Dunnellon High School in Florida. Atkins also served as the athletic director at the school. The team won the Florida State Championship for Class AA that season.

He moved back to Alabama in 1964 to take over the football program at Marengo County High School in Thomaston.

Over the next three seasons his teams went 26-4-1, culminating in a 12-0 State Championship season in 1967. It was the first year of the state playoffs and his team brought home the trophy.

In 1968 he coached for one season at Greenville High School with a 4-5-1 record.

Atkins came to Sheffield High School in 1970 and led the Bulldogs to a 37-17-1 mark as the head football coach. They captured the Tennessee Valley Conference title twice during his tenure at Sheffield. Atkins served as the head coach at Austin in 1975 where his squad went 2-8.

He moved to the AISA for a couple of seasons at Meadowview Christian and South Choctaw Academy before finishing up his career at Cherokee high school (1980-82),

His overall record in fourteen seasons is 91-61-5 in Alabama as a high school football coach. The record for his one season in Florida in unavailable. Roland is the brother of long-time Sweet Water head coach Nolan Atkins who won 269 games as a coach.

In 1983, Atkins moved to Big Springs, Texas. He served as a schoolteacher and a coach, and was the vice principal at Big Spring High School. Roland Atkins, 64, died Thursday, May 14, 1998, in Big Springs, Texas.